The shares climbed to 28.5 Singapore cents at the close, up
from the 26 Singapore cents priced for its initial public
offering. The Singapore benchmark Straits Times Index climbed
less than 0.1 percent.

Billionaire Koh Wee Meng spun off the hotel operator from
his property and hospitality company Fragrance Group Ltd.,
selling 450 million new shares, it said earlier this month. The
offer was 5.7 times subscribed, the company said yesterday.
Fragrance will retain a majority stake in the hotel unit.

“The gross profit and net profit margins have remained
steady in the range of mid-80’s and mid-40’s over the last four
years despite a challenging business environment in 2009,” UOB
Kay Hian, a Singapore brokerage, said in a report ahead of the
debut. “We expect the demand for hotel rooms to remain strong
in the coming years on the back of a heavy influx of tourist
arrivals.”

Koh, Fragrance’s chairman and chief executive officer, has
joined the ranks of the world’s billionaires as a surge in his
company’s shares boosted his fortune to $1.1 billion, according
to Bloomberg calculations. Koh and his wife own an 84.2 percent
stake in Fragrance worth about $1 billion, which has doubled in
the last 12 months. The rest of his net worth is derived from
stakes in other public holdings and dividend income.